Poly-Ana 1.0 New VA softsynth. 1 week full functioning demo

[tomg]

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[AdmiralQuality]

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[Ronny Pries]

Despite its own color and sound, i don't see how Poly-Ana differs from most other modular synths, in terms of modulations. When starting to put a LFO on the filter it just doesn't sound "right" to my ears nor anyway comparable to hardware gear. Much detail gets lost within aliasing and it ends up in a soup. You'd really have a point with your marketing strategy ('Poly-Ana is different') if those details would've been implemented to sound 'correctly' or at least not blurred.

After all your marketing rumble i expected more. Then again the price is fair, given the fact that it competes well to some french vendor you do have a point. However i don't see that the synth itself lives up to its hype, soundwise.

Can't really decide to thumb up or down here.

My 2 cent.

Ronny

[AdmiralQuality]

Despite its own color and sound, i don't see how Poly-Ana differs from most other modular synths

That's what differs, "its own color and sound".

By the way, can you point out a patch that demonstrates the filter LFO problem you describe? Or send me one.

And look, it's not like it's impossible to make a bad sound. There's an infinite number of possible sounds. But there are only infinity/10 GOOD sounds.

[Ronny Pries]

Have to install the beta again at home and make one, timed out here at work yesterday. Will supply one that shows what i mean lateron today.

[AdmiralQuality]

When starting to put a LFO on the filter it just doesn't sound "right" to my ears nor anyway comparable to hardware gear. Much detail gets lost within aliasing and it ends up in a soup.

Here's one oscillator (saw wave) going through one filter, modulated by one of the LFOs. I'm changing the filter cutoff, resonance, LFO modulation depth of the cutoff, LFO rate, LFO waveform. I don't hear anything I'd call "aliasing" in this demo. There is of course a bit of a ringmod-like effect when the LFO is driven up into the audio rates (Poly's LFOs go to 200 Hz!) Could that have been what you were hearing?

http://www.admiralquality.com/products/ ... FOTest.mp3 (Actually that sounds crappy but it's the MP3 compression...)

Here's the 24 bit wav version, 10 MB: http://www.admiralquality.com/products/ ... FOTest.wav

[echopark]

I think poly-ana sounds pretty good but it doesn't make me go "omg! wtf!" nor does it make me reach for my visa. Sorry.

The same here. I tried Ana Poly before it goes to 1.0. But it doesn't impress so much to buy it.

[Ronny Pries]

Hey,

maybe aliasing is the wrong term in this example (sorry, i'm no coder, will try to explain). Using saw and square as LFO mod, when the rate goes beyond 80hz there are lots of clicks as well as intereference noises close to mp3 artefacts beeing introduced - apart from the ringing, which of course belongs there. The overall sound becomes a bit muddy, details get lost. If i reckon correctly, in this example, you're not yet using the entire lfo freq range - i think it became a little bit more obvious around the max.

I'll try to supply something more obvious lateron, still not sure if my description really nails what i hear and mean.

Laters!

Ronny

[AdmiralQuality]

beyond 80hz there are lots of clicks as well as intereference noises close to mp3 artefacts beeing introduced - apart from the ringing, which of course belongs there. The overall sound becomes a bit muddy, details get lost. If i reckon correctly, in this example, you're not yet using the entire lfo freq range - i think it became a little bit more obvious around the max.

Yup, as I suspected. Anything over 20 Hz is in the audio range and no longer really an LFO. What you're hearing is effectively a ring modulaton of the oscillators by the LFO, and they sound just like all the "artifacts" that you describe. So, just don't set the LFO rate that high. ("Dr. it hurts when I do this." ) Most other synth's LFOs don't go fast enough for this to ever be a problem but I figured, why not let them go a few octaves into the audio range so people can make crazy ring-modulator sounds with them?

For vibrato type effects, you'll usually find the musically useful spot to be somewhere around 6 Hz. Anything faster than 10 Hz sounds unhumanly fast.

[AdmiralQuality]

Has anyone had any difficulty loading Poly-Ana in Cubase 4? I've got a Cubase 4 user who says he can load and play the effect version normally (Poly-AnaFX), but the instrument version (Poly-Ana) doesn't appear in his Instruments list.



The plot thickens... He sees BOTH the synth and effect versions of Poly-Ana listed as effects, and can load and run both as effects (you can play the synth as an effect, it just ignores any audio that might be being input and outputs synth sounds as normal.)

But in the instruments list, there's no synth version showing up. (Both are checked enabled in the VST Plugins list.)

He does see other VST 2.3 plugin instruments in the list.

Can anybody on Cubase 4 verify this?

[fabi]

don't have cubase and can't test, but i just wanted to thank your for letting the lfo's go into the audible range - for some those artefacts may be unwanted, but as they're easily avoided i applaud you to have included such a neat feature for users to experiment with.

[Ronny Pries]

Err wait, i clearly said that i *do not* mean the ringing sound.

It seems that some DC offset clicks introduced by LFO square/pulse/saw modulation do their own thing at higher rates. In short terms and slightly overacted, the more modulation is applied, the more sound degrades into noise.

Ronny

[Chris Walton]

AQ, from the clip, I noticed that your Square LFO is a trivial square. Despite your 8x oversampling the entire signal path, thats a very very bad idea and I would recommend that you smoothen out the square LFO a bit more.

For one, it causes aliasing (yes, it is there), I think its some of the clicks Ronny is hearing, and also it puts the filter in some slightly dubious positions sometimes (at one point, the filter overshoots the peak of the rest of the clip by quite a bit because of it).

I will probably download and try this later or at least tomorrow. I just hope that its not too big for my laptop screen (1280x768).

[AdmiralQuality]

Really guys, if you're taking the LFOs up to sonic you're into some uncharted far-out territory there. I just let them go that high because I believe the controls should "go to 11", wherever possible. If you don't like it, just don't do it! A square wave at 100 Hz modulating the filter at near maximum depth will take the filter from wide open to completely shut, it really is just a ring mod at that point. Some of you seem to have the idea that no setting should be capable of making a bad sound, but that's just not how it works.

The oscillators make much better audio rate modulators. And they can be tuned to the keyboard so they'll produce meaningful pitches instead of the static LFO rate.

Chris, want to smooth an LFO? Run it through a Mod mixer and turn the Lag (just a 1 pole LPF) up a bit.

Note that in Poly there's not just two global LFOs shared by all voices as in most classic designs. In Poly each voice needs it's own 2 LFOs so that the LFOs can be set to retrigger. Trust me, you'd see a big performance hit if I did something more them.

[Ronny Pries]

AQ,

it was you who seeded the impression that Poly-Ana is yet the most authentic hardware alike sounding synth around, not me. And as far as i can say from the hardware synths which modulations allow rates beyond 200hz, none of those sound the way Poly-Ana does.

IF the synth would live up to the attitude you built around it i'd simply enjoy it. Unfortunately it doesn't and the more i'm using modulation sources the more it fails to sound "right". I agree, no synth can sound good at any setting, but at least "correct".

Last not least i'd really like you to stop putting my words to whatever meaning. I do know the difference between a ringing filter and an error.

Ronny